bharath

Windows 7 has a small folder icon pinned to the taskbar (or you can add it manually*)  which indicates the shortcut for the “Windows Explorer”. Clicking on it will open the “Libraries” folder by default as shown.

But in most of the cases, you might want this to open a default folder other than the “Libraries” folder. Use the following trick to customize any Windows Explorer shortcut to open it with a custom folder of your choice in Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

* This tutorial assumes that you have a pinned shortcut for the Windows Explorer on your taskbar. To pin the Windows explorer the shortcut to the taskbar, just drag and drop the “Computer” entry found in the Start menu. This guide works well for all types of shortcuts for the Windows Explorer. You can also add a desktop shortcut for the windows explorer on your desktop. To do this, search “explorer” in the Start menu and drag the “Windows Explorer” result to the desktop.

Steps:

1. Right-click on the folder icon at the taskbar:

4. Now go back to the “Properties” window that is kept open in the step 2, choose “Shortcut” tab and focus on the “Target” field. By default, it would have the following path:

%windir%\explorer.exe

5. Select the “Target” filed and paste the address that you copied from the step 3. For “My Documents”, it would be this string

%windir%\explorer.exe Libraries\Documents”::{031E4825-7B94-4DC3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}\Documents.library-ms”

6. Click on “OK” to apply and save the settings.

Target strings for other destinations:

Computer: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /E,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Set the above string under Target filed to open “Computer” by default in Windows Explorer.

From now on, when you double click on this Windows Explorer shortcut, it will open the custom folder that you set.

Related: Pin Computer Icon To Windows 7 Taskbar

Menu bar is that small bar having options like “File”, “Edit”, “View”, “Tools” and “Help” in Windows explorer. One can find it always in the top of any window s explorer window in the Windows XP and earlier versions, however Microsoft had started to hide this menu bar ever since the Windows Vista was launched owing to save some space in Windows explorer. Windows 7 and Vista users can always easily toggle between turning the menu bar on or off by pressing the “Alt” key.

But fortunately Windows 7 has added a feature to let users choose to enable or disable the menu bar in windows explorer. If you are very much used to Windows XP-like environment in windows explorer, you might fancy to have the menu bar permanently appear in Windows 7. Here is how you can turn on the menu bar forever in Windows 7.

1. Open windows explorer (press Start button + E).

2. Click Organize at the top of the window.

3. Expand “Layout” options and select “Menu bar” from the list.

That’s it, the menu bar will start appear in all windows explorer windows from now on.

Earlier this month, we had covered in an article about how to remove “Favorites” from the Navigation pane in Windows 7. Sometimes you don’t want to remove them completely, all you want is to customize them by renaming “Favorites”. Fortunately, this can be done with simple tweaks in Windows 7. Let’s get started on how you can rename “Favorites” in the Windows 7 explorer.

Steps:

1. Type regedit in the Start menu search bar and open “regedit.exe”. Click Yes when prompted by the UAC.

2. Navigate to the following path in the Registry Editor:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}

3. Right-click on {323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E} folder and choose “Permissions…”

4. Click on the Advanced button in the Permissions window. It will now open another dialogue box.

5. Go the Owner tab in the dialogue box. Select your Administrator account. Click OK to save the changes.

6. In the Permissions window, select your username from the list and check against Allow button right next to “Full Control” option. Click OK button to close the window.

6. On the left hand side pane, double click on the “LocalizedString” registry key.

You can give it any name that you wish, be it “PC Locations”, “Personal Favs”, “Important Folders”..etc., whatever .

8. Click OK to save the settings. Close the Registry Editor. Restart the Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) process to see the change.

You can see how “Favorites “being renamed to “My Locations” in Windows 7 explorer’s Navigation pane in the above screenshot.

To set the back the defaults, just go to step 7 and change the Value data field to the default value “@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21796”.